The present invention relates to decoding data, and more specifically, this invention relates to improved decoding of data stored using product code.
Error correction code (ECC) is widely used in magnetic tape storage and optical storage. A particular type of ECC, product error correction code, provides significant gains in error rate performance by decreasing raw channel bit error rates from the range of 1×10−2 to 1×10−4 at the input of the ECC decoder to user bit error rates less than 1×10−17 to 1×10−20. This high-level of data integrity is required in linear tape open (LTO) and proprietary enterprise tape drives.
However, there are still some instances in which greater error reduction would be beneficial. Therefore, enhanced decoding algorithms that allow further reduction in the user error rate thus providing improved error rate performance and/or increased robustness to channel conditions in a power-efficient manner would be useful.